Torotrak Share Discussion Threads

[pseudosphere] 08/3/2022 16:45

If you had TRK shares in a Selftrade (EQI) ISA, that was part of the bulk transfer to Interactive Investor, then the following may be of interest:

I noticed that all the TRK shares held in my ISA had disappeared probably because they had been declared of negligible value prior to the transfer and before the liquidator started talking about a return of capital. I brought this to the attention of ii and eventually they confirmed that Selftrade still hold the shares as nominee and that they cannot be transferred to Interactive Investor. However, a mechanism has been agreed so that any distributed capital will be returned as cash to the owner of the shares. It is not specified whether this will be inside or outside of the ISA.

If others are in the same situation, then hopefully this process will be automatic but it might be worth getting in touch with ii just in case.

[bazworth] 17/1/2022 20:17

Cannot recall what I sold mine for!

Good luck with the return

[pseudosphere] 17/1/2022 15:23

On 14.01/2022 I received a Corporate Action message from Interactive Investor , as follows:

"Shares Deemed Worthless - Update
Further to our notice dated 27th January 2020 advising that the liquidators of Torotrak plc had deemed the shares
worthless and as such were removed from your account.
We have now had further information from the liquidators that indicates that there will be funds distributable to
shareholders. It is anticipated that there will be sufficient funds to enable a return of approximately 1.62 pence,
however this is subject to change based on future realisations and expenses.
We have therefore, recredited your account with the shares."

The approximately 1.62p per share figure is restated but conditional, with no timeline but nice if it happens - I have 450000 TRK shares.

[dave.harker] 15/1/2022 07:03

Do you know any approximate dates when this would be paid?

[replicas1967] 14/1/2022 18:19

1.25p appx to be returned from Administrators

[bodgit] 14/8/2021 08:35

otto fishbine, thanks for that. I was not aware that the Liquidator's report had been filed at Companies House. Anything returned would be welcome as long as it is enough to buy my grandchildren an ice cream when next I see them. I had 691,394 TRK shares, all in an ISA so lost a lot of money. Best wishes, Bodgit

[otto fishbine] 03/7/2021 12:43

Believe it or not per para 6.4 of the Liquidator's report filed at Co's House 18 June 2021 shareholders may receive 1.62p in the £. I wouldn't hold my breath as it seems this is based on £5.5m. As there are 550m of shares in issue and the liquidator is going to court as tracing shareholders this will be a nightmare and any return de minimis. It's very rare that all creditors are satisfied in full and s/h get something. Just goes to show that a good company got knocked over.

[oliversanvil] 14/6/2019 12:14

What a waste of a stamp.!

[bodgit] 14/6/2019 12:10

A colleague of mine who also lost money on TRK has received communication from Mazars about progress of the TRK insolvency. Seems that Deloitte were too expensive and Hilton/Cross protested and they were removed. Nothing left for shareholders though it seems that Jeremy Deering has a (disputed) claim for £493K from his termination of employment in 2015. Oh what fun it would be asking questions of him were I to bump into JD in Cornwall sometime!

[bazworth] 15/4/2019 15:16

Sad to hear about Tony and I hadn’t realised, when hearing the news, that there was a TRK connection. Many of us bought the dream and remained invested for far too many years when the writing really was on the wall. I was taken in by. NTX (NXT) too and try not to think back in too much detail....!

I’m still dreaming of great success but really ought to know better!

[bodgit] 15/4/2019 11:55

Hello king1pin2,

Sad indeed and the initial news reports intimated what had happened and I assume you have more up to date information.

Still also sad that Torotrak ended the way it did and I wish that someone somewhere could tell the the truth of what happened there. I regret that the dice are sometimes heavily loaded against private shareholders and it seems that there is no mechanism for testing and ensuring the veracity of statements made in the various 'official' reports from a company. Some of the statements emanating from Torotrak were ..... well, need I say more. My best wishes to you and any other former Torotrak shareholders.

Yours, Bodgit, now a rather poorer person following the Torotrak debacle. Hey ho.

[king1pin2] 05/4/2019 07:56

Sad to read that our Friend Tony Meadows took his own life after helping his ill wife pass over. I have lots of good memories in my dealings with Tony over the years so am very sad and hope that they both RIP.

[john of groats] 22/6/2018 14:13

Erogenous,

Good to hear from you too. Is investing in a forest to salve your conscience for having invested in "unethical" shares?

Yes, I lost a bundle on blue sky shares as well: TRK, NTX and PRM were the worst. The only one that is now in profit is OXB after waiting patiently for 15 years! I didn't do too badly on PDX which was one I traded rather than sit tight waiting for the promises to come good. Plenty of lessons there.

I did change course in 2016 because of the EU referendum and put money into shares that earned in dollars - some overlap with your "unethical shares".

Perhaps my equivalent to your forest is our garden which I have let run wild for the last three years. However, it was not a matter of conscience but lack of time - our children suddenly started reproducing and the fifth grandchild has just turned up. Having been a local councillor since 2007, I became Vice Chairman in 2015 and Chairman in 2016 and then lost my seat by 8 votes this year! I am now free to do other things like looking after grandchildren and gardening.

John

[lefrene] 16/6/2018 18:19

J of G, I have had that same thing happen but on different websites about 4 or 5 times now, I'm not sure what it is but I was careful not to click on any part of it. As yourself did, I switched off the router and crashed the computer each time it has happened. I haven't found any viruses, but I'm not too computer savvy. I don't think this thing is TRK specific, as I have had it happen here on advfn too, but thank you for the warning.

[john of groats] 16/6/2018 12:51

Warning!

Out of idle curiosity, I did a search to see if there was any news about Torotrak and found that www.torotrak.com is still there so I clicked on it and got a blue page warning me my PC was infected with a virus that was downloading my financial data including credit card details and suggesting I ring a US telephone number for help. I tried shutting the page - no luck but got an audible message about a porn site! I couldn't shut the browser and my PC was frozen.

I looked at my router and there was no Internet traffic but I switched it off to be sure. I then forced off my PC and turned it on again. Everything seemed OK but I did a full scan to check there was no virus. It took ages to scan over 700k files and it found nothing. I then turned on the router again and everything worked.

I assume the administrator has sold that URL to some scam.

John

[john of groats] 16/6/2018 12:48

Warning!

Out of idle curiosity, I did a search to see if there was any news about Torotrak and found that www.torotrak.com is still there so I clicked on it and got a blue page warning me my PC was infected with a virus that was downloading my financial data including credit card details and suggesting I ring a US telephone number for help. I tried shutting the page - no luck but got an audible message about a porn site! I couldn't shut the browser and my PC was frozen.

I looked at my router and there was no Internet traffic but I switched it off to be sure. I then forced off my PC and turned it on again. Everything seemed OK but I did a full scan to check there was no virus. It took ages to scan over 700k files and it found nothing. I then turned on the router again and everything worked.

I assume the administrator has sold that URL to some scam.

John

[galleon] 24/5/2018 17:19

Hi Guys, Just thought I,d clock in for nostalgic reasons. Sorry to see TRK down the tubes. All that coal now gone ! Such is life. Sad. Seems we were mislead all those years ago and allowed our optimistic greed to pull us in and make us reluctant to get out. Thnak G I managed to get out in time a couple of years ago now - what the H happens to time !! - yuk. Sorry for those among you who didn't manage to do so. But best wishes for the future...I have come to realise of course, that health is a much greater concern than investment ( or speculation ! )
God bless you all and thanks for sharing the misery over many years.
Galleon.

[bearable] 09/1/2018 01:22

RIP 15 years

[oliversanvil] 22/12/2017 19:18

If industry is to meet challenging CO2 targets getting more of the latest low emission diesels onto our roads is crucial, as they can emit 20% less CO2 than the equivalent petrol models,” says Tamzen Isacsson, director of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the industry body.

Isacsson blamed “confusion around government air quality plans and taxation” for the drop in diesel sales, and warned: ”If new diesel car registrations continue on this negative trend, UK average new car CO2 levels could indeed rise this year”.

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “We will seek to maintain ambitious targets and our leadership position, and intervening firmly if not enough progress is being made. Could jump back immediately back at 5p and upwards!

[mjdurack] 10/12/2017 05:50

The Single Roller Full Toroidal Variator was simply too big, too expensive, and too inefficient to find a place in mainstream automotive transmissions. The technology on which the business was based was never going to work from the beginning. Failure to recognize this was fueled by a form of technical arrogance verging on negligence and a management policy verging on dishonesty.
Management tried to solve this weakness by looking for other applications, buying time to hide the truth and raise more capital. They may have succeeded but for the rapid rise of vehicle electrification.
VCharge and MKERS failed because improvements in ICE power trains will never match what Hybridization/electrification can do with recovered energy and electric supercharging simply does a better job, cheaper.
We have a CVT that is a third the size of the Torotrak variator. It has double the ratio spread, is much more efficient and much cheaper to produce. We offered this to Torotrak management in 2012. They agreed that we were right but could not admit this to the market as it would highlight the inaccuracies of the story told at the beginning and so would not do a deal. Instead they attempted a very poor copy of its control system now incorporated in their VCharge.
If Torotrak management had been honest enough, brave enough, or humble enough to deal with us, the outcome for the shareholders of Torotrak would have been completely different. In my opinion Torotrak's management and engineering arrogance is to blame for this failure.
Our CVT is now being incorporated in electric drives because of its high efficiency and wide ratio spread, something that the single roller simply cannot do.
Torotrak's failure will not help our commercial progress, as it appears on the surface to be a failure of traction drive CVT's.
For this reason we are also extremely unhappy with the decisions that have been made by Torotrak management and would be happy to assist if any form of formal or informal investigation is undertaken into this collapse. It is very important to us to explain to the automotive industry that traction drives work, but only when designed and managed properly and honestly.

[bodgit] 06/12/2017 19:11

Hello EJ and hope this finds you and yours all well? I have lost quite a lot hanging on to Torotrak and the learning certainly was not worth the amount involved. Hey ho. I am still working through why I hung on for so long when it has been quite clear for some time that the potential market(s) for TRK technology were as good as running away. I hung onto hope despite being well aware of loss aversion and conformation bias as two powerful cognitive biases which, in this case, heavily influenced any rational thinking on my part. Does such a significant loss affect my lifestyle? Thankfully not as I can and frequently do get out on my bike as well as walk in the lake district and elsewhere with my partner and much enjoy the voluntary work I do supporting people with mental health concerns now that I am retired.

My very best wishes to you and thanks for always being courteous and, may I say, pretty well spot on with your various assessments of Torotrak's future. Cheers, Bodgit

[bodgit] 06/12/2017 17:58

Well the RNS this evening just about confirms this now is a dead duck. Nil return for shareholders I guess. Hmmmm, no one has yet accepted responsibility for the failure and IMHO it seems unlikely anyone will - what a surprise.